The guy at the Old School House said he'd do our washing for us - free of charge! How nice? So we left our washing there, to be picked up in the evening before heading to the new place (which, like I mentioned yesterday, is just across the way a bit).
We went to the town of Bath today, so see the roman baths. They have this big museum and you can actually go around the baths and see all the
different layers of construction. The original stonework and the baths themselves were constructed by the Romans around 2,000 years ago. It's
quite amazing that some of the mechanisms they built 2,000 years ago still work today (for example, the water level in the bath is controlled by
a sluice which was built by the Romans and still works today!).
The water for the baths was originally rain which fell some 10,000 years ago and seaped into the Earth's core. It was heated by the natural temperature of the Earth, and as it heated, it rises back to the surface following the fault line which is underneath the town of Bath. When it reaches the surface, the water is some 47°C - all year 'round. You get around 1.17 million litres of water pumped up from the Earth's core every day. Most of it goes straight into the river, but some of it goes into the Baths that the Romans built.
When the Romans conqured Brittain around 100AD, they discovered the water seaps around Bath. The natives held the area as sacred, and they told the Romans that their god Sulis looked over the place. The Romans asked them who Sulis was, and they were told that Sulis was the native's god of wisdom and healing. The Romans, being the pragmatists they were (and having stolen most of their gods from the greeks anyway, didn't think much of pinching this one, too) said "oh, that sounds like our god Minerva" so from that point on, Sulis and Minerva were counted as one and the same to the Romans. In fact, a lot of the carvings mention "Sulis Minerva" - both names together.
When the Romans built their baths, the baths themselves had an enormous domed roof over the water, and plenty of temples and altars for sacrificing to the gods. After their empire ended around 400AD, the baths were pretty much abandoned, and the roof eventually collapsed. Eventually, people returned to the area, and in the 18th century, the baths were rebuilt on top of the roman ruins. This time, with no roof, but instead a big viewing platform around the top.
People would come from all over Brittain to the Baths, for their healing power. But of course, having a bunch of sweaty and often sick people
together in the one body of water is not really all that healing, and in fact many more people would have gotten sick than would have been healed!
Nevertheless, people flocked from all around. And even Queen Victoria came. She suffered from the Gout, and she drank copious amounts of water
from the springs (drinking the water and swimming in it gave you a double benefit, of course, because then you have the water both inside and outside!)
It didn't do a thing for her gout, but it did wonders for Bath (once the Queen goes, suddenly it's very fashionable) and Bath the city was pretty
much rebuilt from scratch. The street level was raise some 18 feet, to keep it above the marshy bogs around the spring, and all nice new building
were built. You can see evidence of the raising of the street level where some building were not demolished - their "ground" floor is actually
one level below street level!
One funny thing I noticed about Bath is that a lot of the building have the toilet built as little wooden boxes outside the main building, up a level or two, which seems to imply that the original buildings never had a toilet. I could not understand why that was though... you can see in the picture that the toilet is the black box hanging off the building.
You could buy a glass of the bath water to drink for 50p, which I did. It's supposed to have "healing powers", but I seemed to have a bit of a queazy stomach after I got home today. I don't know if it was because of the water or not. It had a very lime-y taste. Kind of like drinking water that's had a bunch of rushy nails soaking in it. They signs posted around the actual baths saying "this water has not been treated and so is not safe for drinking or even touching" so they must do something to ensure it won't kill me!
It's a big day tomorrow! We're heading off to London for the final leg of the holiday. I'll be so releaved to have a hotel to go back to each night, instead of staying in a different place every day! It's been quite an experience, but I don't think I could stand doing it for more than the week or so we've been doing it now. I think the hardest thing is not knowing where we're going to be sleep from day to day. But I'm looking forward to getting back into a big city. We'll be taking the car back, too, so it'll be the buses and underground for me, I think!